Before December (By Your Side #1)

1 An Open Relationship

An Open Relationship

“An…open relationship?”

“Yeah. Exactly.”

My boyfriend was beaming. I wasn’t. Not in the least.

“What’s that?”

“Jenna, I think the name kind of gives it away.”

He had to be joking.

Or should I say: he’d better be joking.

He had just dropped me off in front of my dorm! Literally! I hadn’t even had time to get my suitcase out of the car, and already he was thinking about changing everything about our relationship.

“Monty, do we have to talk about this right now?” I grumbled. “How did you not get around to it before?”

“Uh…I just didn’t.”

“Are you serious? We’ve spent the past two days together.”

“I know, but…I just didn’t know how to bring it up. It never felt like the right moment.”

“Oh, but I guess now is just perfect?” I asked.

“Jenna, don’t be like that. I’ve got to go, and I had to tell you before leaving. It’s not something you’d want to talk about on the phone, right?”

“No, it isn’t.”

I sighed and decided to relax a little bit. I was nervous about college, out of my comfort zone, and it wasn’t right to take that out on Monty. Especially when he was about to leave. Being angry at each other the last time we were together… I didn’t like that idea.

But what was I supposed to tell him? I looked at him awhile, dwelling on that innocent smile of his—too innocent for the person he really was.

Then I realized I hadn’t really thought about what would happen to us when I stayed here and he went back home.

He was finished with school. Or at least that’s what he told himself for now.

Our town had a NBA development league team, and he was going to focus on that.

He only liked one thing, really. Playing basketball. All day long.

Me, though… I’d been so busy getting ready for college, wondering what life in the dorms would be like, that I hadn’t even considered that we wouldn’t see each other for a long time.

Too much time, I guess. He had to train and I was taking a full load, so daily contact was going to be a hard ask.

Plus, it’s not like I had money to go see him all the time, and I doubted he’d want to come out here to see me.

I could already hear the excuses: Babe, I just had practice and I’m beat…

At least we’d see each other for Christmas. But December was so many months away.

I tried to focus again on the conversation when I realized he was waiting for an answer.

“I don’t know what to tell you,” I admitted. “I’m not even sure I understand what it means to…have an open relationship. I just don’t know what one is.”

“It’s simple. Look, you and me, we’re a couple, right?”

“I think so,” I joked.

“Perfect. So we love each other, we appreciate each other, we respect each other, but…we’ve both got our needs.”

“Our needs?”

“Yeah.”

“What needs, Monty? Like eating?”

“No, Jenna.”

“Drinking?”

“Not exactly…”

“Sleeping?”

“Jenna, I’m talking about sex.”

“Huh?” I blushed and looked around, wondering if there was someone nearby who could hear us. “S-s-sex? Are you…?”

“Could you stop looking around like we’re plotting a murder? We’re just talking about sex.”

“I don’t like talking about sex,” I said.

“I know.” He rolled his eyes. “Still, though. Sexual needs are real needs, right? I mean, I don’t know about you—you’re kind of asexual—but me…”

“Do you even know what it means to be asexual?”

He ignored me. “I do have my needs.”

“Wait.” My voice went three decibels higher. “Are you telling me you want to sleep with someone else?”

“What? I’m not…”

“I hope this is a joke,” I said.

He held my face in his hands and told me, “All I’m proposing is that if at some point…you know, like if we feel the need, we can just do it.”

I pushed him away. “And might I know why you’d ever feel the need to sleep with someone who wasn’t me?”

“I don’t. Not now,” he said, looking almost offended.

“Oh, you don’t. Then should we go back over what you meant when you described an open relationship to me just now?”

He knew what I was getting at, and he tried to cover it up by touching me again, but I dodged him. I could tell he was upset. I lowered my head.

“I’m sorry,” I murmured. “But I’m really nervous and…”

“I know.” He relaxed and took a breath. “I know it sounds weird,” he went on, “but open relationships are a thing now. And scientists have shown that couples in open relationships stay together longer.”

“I’m sorry, who are these scientists?”

“And I’m not even saying I do want to do it, but…how long are we going to go without seeing each other? Three months?”

“Almost four,” I said. “But you’re ducking the issue…”

“I don’t think it’s good for the body to go that long without doing it, Jenna.”

I scowled. “I went seventeen years without doing it with anyone and I was perfectly fine.”

“Yeah, but when you’re a virgin, it’s different. You don’t know what you’re missing, so you don’t suffer when you don’t have it.” He grabbed my hand and pulled me softly toward him. “Come on, babe. You know I love you, right?”

“Yeah, Monty, but…”

“And you know that won’t change. No matter what happens.

Or who happens.” He laughed at his own joke.

“You get me. That’s why I’m with you, why I love you, because you’ve always understood me perfectly.

And you know I have my needs, Jenna. So…

what’s the problem if I give a little love to someone else when you’re not around? ”

“That’s a very fancy way to avoid the word ‘cheating,’ Monty.”

“It’s not cheating if both people consent to it.”

“Right. So you’re asking for my consent for you to sleep with whoever you want.”

“Hey, it’s not just me. If you meet a guy, you can sleep with him, too.”

Honestly, I didn’t find that very consoling. “Did it ever occur to you that I might not want to sleep with anyone else?” I asked.

“Great! Then don’t. But at least you’ve got the right to change your mind, you know?”

“So you mean that if I walk into the dorm right now and meet a guy and I like him and I want to sleep with him, you don’t care? You know you don’t believe that.”

“That’s not what I’m saying, Jenna.”

“What are you saying then, Monty?”

“We don’t even have to sleep with anyone.

It’s just, with us having a long-distance relationship, we could have the right to…

you know…be in situations, and if a person’s there and we’re super-attracted to them, then fine, we can do what we want with them.

Without resentment, without reproaches, without jealousy. ”

He was still holding my hand, and I wanted to pull it away. I didn’t like what I was hearing at all. “I don’t know, Monty. It sounds a little weird.”

“Come on…” He smiled and gave me a kiss on the lips. “It’ll be fun. Plus, we can have rules.”

“Rules?”

“Of course. To make you more comfortable. Like, every time one of us does something with another person, they have to tell. That would be best, I think.”

“I don’t want to know what you do with other girls,” I told him.

“OK, fine. We won’t enter into details. We’ll just let each other know it’s happened.”

“Monty…”

“Now it’s your turn to set a rule.”

“I never even said I wanted to do this,” I argued.

“Well, let’s imagine you agree. In that case, what rule would you pick?”

I turned it over in my head a moment while he looked at me expectantly. “Well…no friends. I don’t want you hooking up with any of my friends. And I won’t hook up with yours.”

“Sounds good.”

“Are you actually telling me you don’t mind if I sleep with other people?” I asked.

“Jenna, if it’s just sex, then I don’t care.

” He cupped my cheeks again. That was a thing he did when he was trying to convince me of something.

“That’s what an open relationship is. You might sleep with someone else, but you know you love the person you’re actually with.

And that’s how strong our relationship is. Cool, right?”

I wasn’t sure cool was the word I’d use to define the situation, but he wasn’t going to give me any peace till I said yes, so finally I shrugged and responded, “If that’s what you want…”

He smiled and grabbed the back of my neck to kiss me. I let him, even though I wasn’t feeling it. Then he took my suitcase out of the trunk and left it on the ground next to me.

“Great, well we’ll…”

“I’ll take it from here,” I told him. “You should go. Otherwise you’ll be home late.”

Surprised, he asked, “Do you really want to go inside alone?”

“Yeah, I really do.”

“Jenna, I don’t mind lending a hand.”

“I’ve got it.” I gave him a peck on the cheek and he smiled, and I told him to call me when he got in.

“And you text me and let me know how things are,” he said.

To tell the truth, I’d expected a more emotional goodbye. But instead I got a pat on the cheek and he hopped in his car and took off. I saw him wave as he hit the gas.

For a moment, I regretted telling him to go. But it was better that way. I needed to absorb the fact that from now on, I’d probably be spending a lot of time by myself. I had to get used to it, and the sooner, the better.

I turned toward the building and started dragging my suitcase, stomach tight from my frazzled nerves. I felt like a soldier headed out to fight her first battle.

My dorm was close to the Humanities, where I’d be studying.

Looking at the worn redbrick facade, I thought it probably hadn’t changed much in decades.

There was a huge poster hanging on one of the walls that said something about women’s rights.

That made me smile as I took the stairs inside, huffing and puffing because my bag was so heavy.